June 30, 2005

Bad Medicine

After two days of debate, the state House approved a variety of changes to the state's Election Code this week, including one that requires voters to present a photo ID at the polls, and another change that would prevent felons from voting for the duration of their maximum sentence, even if they're out of jail on parole.

The photo ID measure is supposedly an "anti-fraud tool." Rep. Daryl Metcalfe of Cranberry (a Republican backer) noted that "people are required to show photo identification when they fly on a plane, drive a car or cash a check." The Democrats correctly pointed out that transportation by car and airplane is not the same as the constitutionally protected right to vote.The P-G also reported about House bill No. 1318:

"Even if the bill is taken up, some elements might be too controversial to get past the Senate, then the governor."

Let's hope so! Let's also ask:

Why are Republicans always trying to make it more difficult for people to vote?

7 comments:

I'm no fan of the republicans, but why is it the democrats seem to want to make it as easy as possible for people to vote more than once? A legit photo ID prevents fraud, ala the dead voting in chicago for JFK.

Granted, the republicans can't be trusted, but let's not pretend this is a one way street.

This form of ID makes it more difficult for voters in big cities to vote PERIOD because most do not drive and therefore do not have picture ID.

Aside from that, I'm not sure how voters in, say, Democratic districts in Ohio, would be able to run around voting twice when they had to stand in line for 8 - 12 hours to vote once due to the shortchanging of voting machines in "urban" (black) districts.

Well, aside from the fact that you're not supposed to need to go out and purchase something in order to vote, how about this: instead of worrying about something that happened 45 years ago (dead voters in Chicago), lets fix a few problems that occurred less than ONE year ago:

- Misallocation of voting machines in African-American districts in Ohio vs. machines in white suburban districts so that African-American voters had to wait in line for up to TWELVE hours in order to cast their vote (that is the ones who felt that they could afford to skip work that day to stay in line).

- Some 60+ voting machines sitting in a warehouse on election day that were meant for African-American districts. The Republican official lied to a judge on election day that any machines were "missing."

- The Democratic voters whose registrations were challenged on election day because they hadn't gone down to the post office to pick up a certified letter from the Republican party. The fact that they hadn't picked up and returned the letter was used as "proof" that they did not live were they said that they did.

- The voting machines that registered a vote for Bush when the voter chose Kerry. When the voters tried three times to change the vote back to Kerry, their vote then became officially "spoiled" and they could not vote. Curiously enough, it didn't happen the other way around.

- The polling place in an urban district in OH where the election officials illegally locked out pollwatchers and the press when it came time to count the votes.

- The polling places where Republican pollwatchers demanded photo ID to challenge voters even though it was not required by law.

- The scanned results that were sent via unsecured modems to central unsecured Windows-based PCs with Access data bases where the results for Bush were millions to one beyond a statistical probability.

- Machines with no paper trail that made recounts an impossibility.

- Over 50,000 complaints by voters on election day.

Tell you what you fix these problems, and I'll not only agree to photo IDs, I'll agree to a friggin' tattoo.